The first Future Ready Librarians Challenge features the Future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection, a short and simple survey to help you assess your practice in relation to the Future Ready Librarians Framework. For this challenge, you will reflect, record, and share professional strengths to better understand how you can lead, teach, and support students and fellow educators in your schools.
ACTIVITY 1: WHAT IS YOUR FUTURE READY REFLECTION?
Take 15 minutes to help plan your professional year! Designed for librarians by librarians, the Future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection allows you to better identify not only where your professional strengths are, but where your future growth and learning might be.
If you haven’t already done so, complete the Future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection, save your results, and ask yourself — in what ways does affirm or challenge me as a Future Ready Librarian?
School librarians often struggle to get clear professional feedback about their practice — but formative data is essential to setting personal and program goals, identifying stories of success, and planning for future learning.
- Take the Future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection.
- Save your results for future use.
- Tweet that you’ve started using the hashtag #FutureReadyLibs.
- Invite a colleague to join you.
ACTIVITY 2: WHAT’S YOUR SUPERPOWER?
Now that you’ve taken the future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection, name your superpower! Examine your results to identify one area of strength that resonates with you and share it on Twitter!
Let’s break the Internet with librarian superpowers! (Or at least start a trend.) Identify one superpower that was revealed by the Future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection and post it on Twitter on Thursday, October 22, 2020, at 12 pm ET. Make sure to include the hashtags #futurereadylibs.
(If you can’t post on that date, anytime is fine. But you might not be as trendy….)
The Future Ready Librarian Framework has helped redefine the roles of school librarians. Librarians know that, but others might still envision you reading from a rocking chair. Let’s celebrate and share the ways in which we lead, teach, and support Future Ready Schools across the U.S.
- Review the results of your Future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection
- Examine your strengths to identify one ‘superpower’
- Tweet your Future Ready Librarians superpower using the #futurereadylibs hashtags
ACTIVITY 3: WHAT’S YOUR KRYPTONITE?
Got a growth mindset? Then embrace current professional weaknesses and accept them for what they are — areas for growth, future strengths, or PD learning opportunities!
Embrace a growth mindset by reflecting and sharing one area revealed by the Future Ready Librarian Self-Reflection in which you’d like to up your game in the coming year.
Within the Future Ready Librarians Facebook group, create a short post with your current kryptonite — one area in which you’re not as strong as you’d like to be right now AND why you’d like to become stronger in the coming school year. (If you’re not already part of the Future Ready Librarians Facebook Group, join this community of 24K users which is helping librarians navigate this crazy year.)
Like formative assessments in the classroom, it is important to recognize both success and productive struggle. While proficiency feels good, it’s also important to identify areas for new learning or a professional stretch. By using the dynamic Future Ready Librarians Facebook group, your current professional struggle is likely to be supported by ideas, solutions, and encouragement from others who can lend their superpowers to you!
- Review the results of your Future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection
- Identify your ‘kryptonite’ — areas that are not current strengths and which will require new learning, effort or focus.
- On the Future Ready Librarians Facebook group, create a short post with your current kryptonite AND why you’d like to become stronger this year.
- If you’re not already enrolled in the FRL FB group, sign up!
ACTIVITY 4: HOW CAN YOU USE YOUR POWERS FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS?
How do you lead within and beyond the library? How can you use your superpowers to help students, colleagues, and families as they navigate learning and teaching in a pandemic era? Start with just One Small/Good Thing and share to inspire others.
Use the Future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection to identify One Good Thing and share it via FlipGrid. One Good Thing is a simple act of leadership, teaching, or support that makes a difference to students, teachers, and/or your community as a librarian.
Sharing your One Good Thing with others will easily add up to many good things and inspire others to action!
The complexity and uncertainty of the pandemic makes it hard to identify where to start in making a difference for students, colleagues, and your community.
- Review the results of your Future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection
- Consider the new and emerging needs of students, teachers, and community amidst the pandemic to identify One Good Thing that you’re doing to make a difference
- Create a short video and share it on social media. Make sure you tag it with #futurereadylibs and #frlgoodthings.
The Future Ready Librarians strand is supported by Follett.
